Writers with Questions, ep. 1: JW

Hey, Dan,

Hope all is well. I saw the post you shared on Facebook about mentor for comedy writers and it piqued my interest.

I'd like to find out more about it. In addition to assignments and critiques, I'm hoping you can help me meet goals for different aspects of my writing.

For example, I would like to complete a writers packet for submittal in 'x' number of months. I also have an outline and the first act written for a screenplay. I'd like to have this first draft completed by 'x' in 2015 and 'x' number of blog post per month.

I understand the work is on me, but would like someone to be a mentor/coach through this journey. It's similar to an accountability partner or a personal trainer that makes sure the work is getting done with measured success. Is this in-line with what you're proposing?

Also, are one-on-one phone calls included? While written feedback is great, it would be nice to have a conversation now and then.

Thanks and let me know your thoughts.

JW


[Here's my response to JW, who took a standup class from me back when I was living in Austin, btw]


Hey, J, good questions, as per usual.

Yeah, I'm figuring out the best ways to do a mentoring/coaching thing, specifically for the odd brain/life that is a comedy writer's.  This whole approach stemmed from me working with a few writers who reached out to me, and my realizing that "teaching" doesn't work so well on this kind of deep skills stuff, it needs to be more ongoing, close-in mentoring/coaching.  So, yes, definitely part of it should be directed at helping you move projects along, hit deadlines, build submission packets toward getting real work, and becoming aware of what you specifically need in order to be a productive writer (i.e., some people need deadlines, some people don't, either/or is fine, just need to know your own specifics). And Skypes are cool, always good to hear a Louisiana accent while I'm sitting in Los Angeles.

I'll use our little exchange here as a blog post, if that's okay with you (without your name attached, unless you want "the fame"). I want to set up the blog, twitter feed, and the service itself as a real resource for people who want to comedy write. When I was a panelist at Austin Film Fest this year, I did a talk on How to Break Into Writing for Late Night.  It was attended by well over 100 people who obviously wanted to learn this stuff, but had no logical way of doing that.  Seems a shame to not loose more comedy writers upon the world. I think Bill Cosby would agree.

- d